The impact of 5D Mark III raw and what does Vincent Laforet think of it?

[peederj]

On the subject of reliability, Roger Cicala reports that the most frequent camera damage coming back from rentals on the 5D3 is bent CF pins inside the camera's slot. If there's a grain of sand caught in those little holes on the card or if you just jam it in there a bit askew your camera is SD-only until repaired. It happened so often on the 5D2 they made it easier for service to repair the pins but they didn't make it harder to break in the first place, that's the CF standard's problem. And the 5D3 has only one CF slot, and it's the only way you're getting RAW out of it...and you're gonna be doing insertions every 15 minutes or so rather than once or twice a day...

 

I have no conflicts of interest and I've never even been in contact with anyone from Canon. I'm just running through the other sides of this, immune enough to the hype to not have already bought $500 worth of CF cards but not immune enough to not be thinking it all through very carefully. Please resist group polarization...there's a waft of Lord of the Flies in this whole personal allegiances thing.

[ScreensPro]

I've just now finally had the time to take a look at Bloom's post.

 

What is the problem? He is clearly impressed and supportive of what ML are doing and says the resolution and DR are greatly improved. His discussion about the reasons that raw can be a hindrance are balanced and legitimate. He also goes on to gripe about the filesize and workflow of the 1-DC, not exactly in fitting with the idea of him being some kind of Canon spokesperson.

 

I wonder how many people here actually read the article... Or just the headline? (A huge problem in all internet forums and debates).

 

Here is an extract.... Are these the words of someone who has dismissed the hack and is, in any way, unsupportive of their efforts?

 

"Now with the additional excitement of the new Magic Lantern hack which has quite incredibly brought raw video to the 5DmkIII, the raw clamour has reached unparalleled heights. Although this hack is still in a very early stage, it will undoubtedly reach a more stable level pretty soon, and everyone will be desperate to shoot everything in raw on the MKIII. Why? Because it’s raw…you know? It’s better. Yep. It is. A hell of a lot better. Not just that, but the image itself is better than the MkIII is able to give us normally. There is more detail, and with raw much more dynamic range of course. There are are a number of big caveats though which I will get to…but the achievement of these people is incredible and should be applauded hugely."

[kedbear]

I've just now finally had the time to take a look at Bloom's post.

 

What is the problem? He is clearly impressed and supportive of what ML are doing and says the resolution and DR are greatly improved. His discussion about the reasons that raw can be a hindrance are balanced and legitimate. He also goes on to gripe about the filesize and workflow of the 1-DC, not exactly in fitting with the idea of him being some kind of Canon spokesperson.

 

I wonder how many people here actually read the article... Or just the headline? (A huge problem in all internet forums and debates).

 

Here is an extract.... Are these the words of someone who has dismissed the hack and is, in any way, unsupportive of their efforts?

 

"Now with the additional excitement of the new Magic Lantern hack which has quite incredibly brought raw video to the 5DmkIII, the raw clamour has reached unparalleled heights. Although this hack is still in a very early stage, it will undoubtedly reach a more stable level pretty soon, and everyone will be desperate to shoot everything in raw on the MKIII. Why? Because it’s raw…you know? It’s better. Yep. It is. A hell of a lot better. Not just that, but the image itself is better than the MkIII is able to give us normally. There is more detail, and with raw much more dynamic range of course. There are are a number of big caveats though which I will get to…but the achievement of these people is incredible and should be applauded hugely."

 

The problem is it's personal.

[Richard Collins]

On the subject of reliability, Roger Cicala reports that the most frequent camera damage coming back from rentals on the 5D3 is bent CF pins inside the camera's slot. If there's a grain of sand caught in those little holes on the card or if you just jam it in there a bit askew your camera is SD-only until repaired. It happened so often on the 5D2 they made it easier for service to repair the pins but they didn't make it harder to break in the first place, that's the CF standard's problem. And the 5D3 has only one CF slot, and it's the only way you're getting RAW out of it...and you're gonna be doing insertions every 15 minutes or so rather than once or twice a day...

 

I have no conflicts of interest and I've never even been in contact with anyone from Canon. I'm just running through the other sides of this, immune enough to the hype to not have already bought $500 worth of CF cards but not immune enough to not be thinking it all through very carefully. Please resist group polarization...there's a waft of Lord of the Flies in this whole personal allegiances thing.

 

Fair play this is a really interesting point! Wonder if there is scope for a CF to some sort of external recorder/HDD adapter?

[Halycon]

I shot some samples to make some comparisons yesterday (that was around 36 hours ago) and I still can't get the smile off my face.

I have in the past worked hard to get the H.264 footage from the 5D to surrender some emotion to the results...and at times it worked, but most of the time I was never really convinced. Shooting raw on the 5D changed everything.

Here are some simple samples I shot whilst walking down for a coffee yesterday...

"http://player.vimeo.com/video/66499520"

So anyone thinking about this?...this is a serious upgrade (and yes I agree with an earlier contributor on calling it an upgrade...and of course use at your own risk). This is every bit as good as you think it might be!

Thanks again to the Magic Lantern team and to David and the EOSHD crew...seriously, you deserve medals!

And quick footnote; there are a whole lot of camera's out there that can produce that elusive 'emulsion'(as one contributor put it)...and I applaud everyone of them and secretly wished I owned most of them but for now I am eternally grateful that the ML team were able to breathe some soul back into the 5D.
Philip Bloom is also right in one respect...raw (small caps :-D), can be a dog to work with in terms of storage, process and post edit equipment and software but then again everything worth having is worth working for.

:-)

[Andrew Reid]

Thanks again to the Magic Lantern team and to David and the EOSHD crew...seriously, you deserve medals!

:-)

 

There's no crew at EOSHD it's just me :)

 

Thanks dude.

[jlev23]

wow, reading through this whole thread is amazing and sometimes ridiculous but highly entertaining. i love how everyone thinks the way they use the 5D is the only way. this is nothing but good news, i remember having to shoot on the MK2 when it has no manual exposure!

we had to AE lock and automatic exposure before each shot! i never bought a MK2, there just more and more was one on every set i was working on, i might use it for one rigged place, or one hard to get to angle and even stills for plate and elements shots on vfx projects. i finally broke down and bought the mk3 when it first came out. im still surprised on how much i use it for my own personal projects now and then there are all the jobs now that it must be used, since its been written into the treatment! "this is a 5D job" has been written straight into treatments, approved by agency and clients and by the time it comes to me shooting it i cant even suggest another camera!

anyway, there has only a few jobs, mostly docu style comedies that i have even had to roll camera for for more than 40 seconds, so the limit is ok with me. my only issue right now is waiting for reliability. commercials is a no risk business, and it took a while for a 5D to be embraced as a no risk camera, even the first year of epics id make sure there was a red one on set.

still, i sit here with my 5D, my 64gb komputerbay card and wait for the ML upgrade to go through all the tests. the question still comes down to reliability for me and we have to check on the card if we got the shot or not before we move on, so most importantly for my particular business is that you are able to do that, which comes down to the question i keep asking:

when shooting raw with ML, do you still get a clean hdmi out that you can record prores to an external recorder, if so, that answers everything to me, then the footage can be checked quickly and you have a backup, but most importantly you have a proxy to edit with, then you go back to the raw files for color grading in the last steps of the project, as you would if you were shooting with an epic, trancoding to prores by the dit, use those to edit, then go back to the raw.

thats really the only question i have, someone using the hack, please let me know!

what would be even more amazing is if you could simultaneously record prores or even h264 to the SD card and raw to the cf card!!!

then you could check and playback the files on the camera, how nice would that be ;)

andrew? someone? please help.

[riccardocovino]

I wasn't sure.. so I looked for it and.. bang!

 

http://philipbloom.net/2010/04/01/canonraw/

 

 

this is PB's april's fool in 2010, saying there was a Canon firmware upgrade giving RAW :D

 

the funniest part is when he writes: "Canon have done exactly what we wanted. RAW baby, RAW! "

[Halycon]

Well, an even more amazing job then Andrew! Great work!

:-D

[mtheory]

Dan Chung just posted "Canon 5D RAW hack - Useful for Real World Production?". 

[markm]

Dan Chungs review hits it about right,

[Guy Calaf]

There has been a less than warm response to this in the pro world cause the pro world has tried the hack way before in the old days of the 5DII. We all used magic lantern to monitor audio and such. I tried again last year. 

Unfortunately, while being a great project it lacks, and it always lacked, the necessary stability and reliability that the pro world needs when working on pro jobs. Which, God forbid, might not be better than a non pro job, but when our income depends from our tools we need our tools to work and be reliable. Always. 

 

I am pro. I use my cameras for work as tools. Even if ML develops a stable firmware that is locked in the camera, it would have to be a permanent, solid solution. I would be willing to pay at least $500 per camera for the firmware. Said that, all the DSLR problems that made us leave the DSLR world still remain. Rolling shutter, massive camera shake, record lag, depth of field of full frame is just too much for run and gun, F2 at 6400iso handheld shooting. I do non fiction and I need that. No audio, bla bla bla. 

 

Vincent Laforet is a pro who needs tools that work, and that do their job. If there is one person who I would not criticize for not standing on the side of the DSLR revolution that's him. Or are we remaking history? 

 

He promotes Canon C cause Canon C does that job that he needs to be done for those projects.  I own a C300, 2 5DIII and I'm buying a C100. These are the cameras I use all the time. The rest I rent. 

For what I do, the 5DIII have been replaced by the Canon Cinema system. I do a lot of handheld work and the C300 is probably the best camera out there for what i need, hands down. 

 

When the nw firmware came out for the 5DIII i tried to do pro res hq on them since I grade mixed clips of c300 and 5diii and I need more depth from the very flimsy dslr codec, and there is a video delay coming through the HDMI. Why wasn't there any warm welcome to the new firmware? 

 

because the pro community has mostly moved to better cameras in the last few years. Before we didn't have many options. Now we have options and we are taking them. 

[Bruno]

They should concentrate 100% on 5d mk3 only and not waste time on other camera...

 

Let me take a wild guess here... you own a 5Dmk3! :)

[Andrew Reid]

Vincent Laforet is a pro who needs tools that work, and that do their job. If there is one person who I would not criticize for not standing on the side of the DSLR revolution that's him. Or are we remaking history?  He promotes Canon C cause Canon C does that job that he needs to be done for those projects.  I own a C300, 2 5DIII and I'm buying a C100. These are the cameras I use all the time. The rest I rent. 

For what I do, the 5DIII have been replaced by the Canon Cinema system. I do a lot of handheld work and the C300 is probably the best camera out there for what i need, hands down. 

 

One word. Raw.

 

There are many pros who need to shoot raw.

 

How many pro photographers shoot JPEG?

 

C300 and C100 ergonomics are overrated. I know many pros at top of their game who dislike the C300's ergonomics. Not good ENG for example. DSLR hassles are overstated. How simple is pressing a button and recording an image? Every camera needs rigging for handheld work, your C300 doesn't float on a magic carpet. DSLR is smaller and lighter thus easier to rig. The audio side is fixed in the same way that Hollywood did it with Super 35mm. Separate audio recorder. If that is too much hassle for you (oh dear) then Magic Lantern has full manual audio control for external mics and it works.

 

A lot of people are down on DSLRs because they couldn't figure them out. C300 makes it easier for them to figure out. Simple broadcast ready codec, simple ergonomics and build in ND, simple audio, simple image as well haha.

[Andrew Reid]

then you could check and playback the files on the camera, how nice would that be ;)

andrew? someone? please help.

 

Even in this early pre-Alpha, pre-release development code Alex has experiment playback working already.

 

It is very basic but will improve massively.

 

People are saying same things about raw as when 1080p came out... Big file sizes, can't figure out the workflow, don't need the extra resolution. 1080p became the standard. Same will happen with raw. Today's terrabyte is tomorrow's megabyte.

[Andrew Reid]

In the last few days, both Andrew and Luke have cleared my 'video/filmmaker' bookmarks folder in one fell swoop! The pioneering attitude and spirit to accepting this amazing development is utterly refreshing. The other bloggers' (you all know who!), have become stale and self indulgent.

 

I personally, don't yet have the need to shoot raw, as my work doesn't require it... (yet!) I shoot on the C100, 7D and the Sony F5 of late, yet I still find this development one of the most important of at least my career.

 

Hats off to Nuemann Films and EOSHD, you guys will absolutely be my future go tos!

 

Great to hear this. You truly get it!

[jlev23]

 

"When the nw firmware came out for the 5DIII i tried to do pro res hq on them since I grade mixed clips of c300 and 5diii and I need more depth from the very flimsy dslr codec, and there is a video delay coming through the HDMI. Why wasn't there any warm welcome to the new firmware? "

 

was there always a delay coming from the hdmi feed, before the new software?

my AC just noticed it the last job and didnt think it was always there??? weird.

 

 

[Guy Calaf]

One word. Raw.

 

There are many pros who need to shoot raw.

 

How many pro photographers shoot JPEG?

 

C300 and C100 ergonomics are overrated. I know many pros at top of their game who dislike the C300's ergonomics. Not good ENG for example. DSLR hassles are overstated. How simple is pressing a button and recording an image? Every camera needs rigging for handheld work, your C300 doesn't float on a magic carpet. DSLR is smaller and lighter thus easier to rig. The audio side is fixed in the same way that Hollywood did it with Super 35mm. Separate audio recorder. If that is too much hassle for you (oh dear) then Magic Lantern has full manual audio control for external mics and it works.

 

A lot of people are down on DSLRs because they couldn't figure them out. C300 makes it easier for them to figure out. Simple broadcast ready codec, simple ergonomics and build in ND, simple audio, simple image as well haha.

whatever man. I had respect for this site, but you can go with the haters. BTW, My jobs have always separate sound with a separate sound mixer and boom operator. Simple image from the C system? Do you know anything about the C300? perhaps you should read some material about it before being so firm.

Raw whatever. I am a still photographer as well. If I need raw I rent or buy a RED o similar. I'm certainly not going to rely on my flimsy 5DIII for a job that requires me to shoot raw. That is a professional contradiction in terms. 

 

My last post here. Hate at your pleasure. 

[peederj]

Again Andrew, the C100/C300 ergonomics aren't overrated, and I own, paid for, and shoot with both the 5D3 and C100. I shot only with DSLRs until the C100 appeared. The C100 is vastly better for handheld work...there is no comparison. I've posted some of the most thorough critiques of the C100 ergonomics, and even with those complaints (some of which they are fixing, such as moving the focus assist point) it wouldn't come close to my list of complaints with the 5D3 ergonomics. Even with ML and/or a Ninja or SmallHD helping, and various Zacuto and other addons that were contrived to make an unworkable situation a bit more pleasant. The only real ENG weakness for the C100/C300 is the lack of an inbuilt shoulder mount...how's the built-in shoulder mount on your DSLR? Or power zoom for that matter?

 

Really the RAW capability is impressive technologically but it's a year or two ahead of its time, while the C100/C300/C500 are here and working today and incredibly pleasant tools. One-touch custom white balance with a dedicated button, expose for the highlights in Cinelock using the waveform scopes, use the Ninja with 4-channel audio capability (I use a Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro and the XLRs in the handle if I need them) direct to ProRes, apply a LUT (I use Pomfort's DSLRLog2Video even though that was intended for Cinestyle, it works great with Canon Log too for $29) and Bob's your proverbial uncle. It works. It looks great. You swear by it rather than at it. People using such setups don't post many example videos, they are too busy making money with them and they don't see anything that's a genuine improvement that will net them more money otherwise.

 

I may well use the ML RAW if it gets worked out, and you can claim bragging rights for being its advocate from the beginning, but pissing on things you don't understand either is the pot-kettle problem. I'm an advocate for the less financially empowered filmmaker like you are, but not at the expense of attacking the better off ones that are making very sound decisions you aren't privy to.

 

One word. Raw.

 

There are many pros who need to shoot raw.

 

How many pro photographers shoot JPEG?

 

C300 and C100 ergonomics are overrated. I know many pros at top of their game who dislike the C300's ergonomics. Not good ENG for example. DSLR hassles are overstated. How simple is pressing a button and recording an image? Every camera needs rigging for handheld work, your C300 doesn't float on a magic carpet. DSLR is smaller and lighter thus easier to rig. The audio side is fixed in the same way that Hollywood did it with Super 35mm. Separate audio recorder. If that is too much hassle for you (oh dear) then Magic Lantern has full manual audio control for external mics and it works.

 

A lot of people are down on DSLRs because they couldn't figure them out. C300 makes it easier for them to figure out. Simple broadcast ready codec, simple ergonomics and build in ND, simple audio, simple image as well haha.

[Escapist]

whatever man. I had respect for this site, but you can go with the haters. BTW, My jobs have always separate sound with a separate sound mixer and boom operator. Simple image from the C system? Do you know anything about the C300? perhaps you should read some material about it before being so firm.

Raw whatever. I am a still photographer as well. If I need raw I rent or buy a RED o similar. I'm certainly not going to rely on my flimsy 5DIII for a job that requires me to shoot raw. That is a professional contradiction in terms. 

 

My last post here. Hate at your pleasure. 

 

If it makes you feel better, I got into filmmaking with DSLRs as a non-pro. Then I started doing real client work and suddenly time and money mattered. People depend on you to deliver. The c100 looks really good in that respect. raw on the 5d hasn't changed my mind because that wouldn't help any of the variables I depend on (except image quality, which is only one part).

 

but for a non professional project, I wouldn't mind.